I really thought the days of region-locking were dying with the DVD, but it seems I was wrong - Samsung has decided to revive the odious practice with its Galaxy Note 3 smartphone.

Yes, if you buy an unlocked Note 3 in Europe and travel to, say, the U.S., you will not be able to use a local SIM card. In other words, you will be forced to buy your carrier's outrageous roaming fees or go Wi-Fi-only.

I can understand why a phone company would want to restrict you to using their service with the phone they are selling, but what service does a region lock on a device serve?

It was already stated. You will be forced to pay data roaming charges to your carrier unless you want to buy a new phone. I'd bet most will opt for the roaming charges rather than be stuck with a dumb phone for a bit (stupid, but likely). Seems like a simple case of Samsung sucking up to carriers to me. I'm not much into government interference in business as long-time readers probably know, but if there'd be any time for the EU to get involved this would be it. Otherwise we're going to see widespread adoption of this idea and the resultant corruption that accompanies it.

If you want to earn some nice profits by high roaming charges than you lock the device to your network or at least your country and not to a region. I'm paying roaming fees in other european countries all the time but I'm only in another region every few years.

If you want to earn some nice profits by high roaming charges than you lock the device to your network or at least your country and not to a region. I'm paying roaming fees in other european countries all the time but I'm only in another region every few years.

Won't get any argument from me, but this way they can nail a segment of the market that do a lot of region travel. It's a nasty move and I don't like it anymore than you do. I'm just saying there's an obvious reason they're doing this; either the carriers will push more Samsung devices in exchange or else perhaps a bit of a kickback from the roaming charges they will collect. Either way this should be stopped, and the best way to stop it is to not buy it. You hear that, European readers? Do not buy the European Galaxy Note 3. Vote with your wallet this time and we may not have to fight this battle again. In fact, don't buy Samsung phones for a while.

If you want to earn some nice profits by high roaming charges than you lock the device to your network or at least your country and not to a region. I'm paying roaming fees in other european countries all the time but I'm only in another region every few years.

You try to make that fly with the EU. You already pay far less in roaming fees in other EU countries than you used to because the EU has intervened several times, and more reductions are in the cards - in other words there's less and less to earn for the carriers from trying to enforce roaming within the EU countries at least, and greater and greater chance they'd just provoke more regulation.

The profits are still decent: I pay 7.5 cent per minute at home, 28.56 ct/min in all member states of the EU and no less than 149 ct/min in other european countries, same as in the USA. 0 ct/m, 8.33 ct/m and 69 ct/m for incoming calls. 7.5 ct / 9.52 ct / 49 ct for a SMS.

People in small countries with lots of tourists like Austria do profit from the high roaming costs, the locals get really nice deals from their telcos. But inhabitants of Switzerland on the other hand do have very high costs for local calls and for roaming. Like prices elsewhere 15 years ago, about 4 times higher than in Germany.

I can understand why a phone company would want to restrict you to using their service with the phone they are selling, but what service does a region lock on a device serve?

The reason commonly given for this kind of practice with regards to mobile phones is to reduce the value of it to thieves.

Stolen phones are often taken abroad to be sold, because selling them in the country of origin makes makes it much easier for the authorities to catch them. Blocking the phone from working overseas is a good way of making the device much less valuable to thieves, and thus much less likely to be stolen.

That's the theory anyway. Whether it's the *real* reason for the lock is another story.

Lol - Samsung shooting themselves in both foots. The new region lock feature will come to more devices soon:

Yep, don't buy Samsung phones for a while. I don't want to have to deal with this coming to the states too, although I'm surprised we didn't think of it first. Usually we're the first market for underhanded practices

(german)

Thanks, been needing some practice with my German. Haven't used it in a while so it's a bit rusty.

Note the update at the bottom, indicating that this is a restriction for activation of the phone. So if its Europe region locked, it must be activated with a European SIM first. After the initial activation, its supposed to accept any sim from anywhere.

Two theories:
-Samsung is doing it for the carriers
-The price gap between regions will be to big

As a Note user, I say: "F**k you, Samsung"

I didn't think of being able to charge different prices.
That is probably the whole reason right there... that and doing rollouts at different times.
I don't think they'd do this to collect roaming fees.

I've been living as an expat for quite a number of years now. So for me, it was the past ... I am not surprised, things haven't changed.

Well... actually they have. It's not as cut and dry as MYOB makes out. It really depends on how you get your phone. If you go to a branded store belonging to one of the main carriers, yes - you will get a SIM locked phone. If you go to somewhere like Carphone Warehouse, it's absolutely possible to get a phone that is unlocked, but that *should* have been locked. Carphone Warehouse (as an example, as they are on most highstreets) do not sell the carrier's branded hand sets per se, but sell them at the price dictated by the carrier. They sell most of their phones as unlocked handsets, and the purchaser just buys the phone at the carriers price, gets a SIM for the provider and pays a top-up fee to add credit of a specific level. So, when we got my eldest's phone, we bought it on Virgin Mobile (and paid a £10 top-up) as that was the cheapest "deal", but she has only ever used a Tesco mobile SIM in it (which, if you are not aware, is on a completely different base GSM network and should have been barred.) Now, not ever phone they sell is unlocked, but it's pretty easy to ask them which ones aren't and to buy one of those.

In spain you can get a sim and decent internet for a cheap monthly charge if you know where to look and I buy a smart phone in Gibraltar.

Same. Possibly cheaper.

You can do the same in the UK. Buy the cheapest contract with a phone and then say you don't want a handset update and negotiate a deal on the phone.

No, you can easily get a contract without a phone, a PAYG contract without a phone and many providers now offer to unlock your phone after a set period for free or a nominal charge. I can walk in to any Supermarket and get a PAYG SIM card for circa £1, use it for a few months then get a new one with a better rate on it. Companies like GiffGaff are driving down the cost of contracts - for around £10 it's possible to get unlimited Internet, SMS and very cheap calls on GiffGaff for example.

Unlocked means that I can got to Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Dbuai, Brazil, Jordan, Columbia and Kazakhstan (all places I've been to on business in the last year) and buy a local SIM card and make calls without roaming charges.
This is the esence of what a Dual Sim phone is for anyway.

was telling the carriers to take a hike and never compromising on that.

Couldn't agree more. That was one of several things that drew me to the iPhone in the beginning. This was before I decided that I would never do a carrier contract again and would only buy unlocked devices. In fact, it was the bloatware-free iPhone, coupled with a certain US carrier's terrible network, that showed me just what a smart phone could be without all the crap and decided me on this. I'm still an iPhone guy to this day for completely different reasons, mostly because I can't find a current Android phone I like. I figure if I'm going to have to put up with no replaceable battery, no MicroSD and no physical keyboard, might as well stay where the awesome apps are.

"was telling the carriers to take a hike and never compromising on that.

Couldn't agree more. That was one of several things that drew me to the iPhone in the beginning. This was before I decided that I would never do a carrier contract again and would only buy unlocked devices. In fact, it was the bloatware-free iPhone, coupled with a certain US carrier's terrible network, that showed me just what a smart phone could be without all the crap and decided me on this. I'm still an iPhone guy to this day for completely different reasons, mostly because I can't find a current Android phone I like. I figure if I'm going to have to put up with no replaceable battery, no MicroSD and no physical keyboard, might as well stay where the awesome apps are. "

Interestingly enough, the best Android phone in my opinion, the Nexus 4, also has no replaceable battery or MicroSD. Again it is the best because it doesn't get corrupted by carrier shitware.

Interestingly enough, the best Android phone in my opinion, the Nexus 4, also has no replaceable battery or MicroSD. Again it is the best because it doesn't get corrupted by carrier shitware.

Yeah, agreed and it would give me no advantages to switch to the Nexus 4. Platform is secondary to me. Apps, SDKs, and features are top on my priority list for a phone and I would therefore lose the iOS app ecosystem for no real gain. There are the Galaxy S4 Google Play editions of course, but given what we're commenting about here I'm not likely to buy one of those.

"explanation for this whole debacle is that Samsung instituted the locks in an attempt to combat gray-market sales — a European buying a phone from Hong Kong over eBay to save money, for example."

If really so, then it's stupid crazy idiotic. Someone at Samsung must be really on the edge of sanity. Why would be "gray-market" to buy a device abroad and bring it home? It's not, and it's crazy to think so. Lots of people did it, do it, and will do it, and the only thing this 'locking' does is more of them will hack their devices.

"explanation for this whole debacle is that Samsung instituted the locks in an attempt to combat gray-market sales — a European buying a phone from Hong Kong over eBay to save money, for example."

I would argue that if enough users are doing that for Samsung to see it as a problem, perhaps they should revisit their pricing in those regions. If it's cheaper to buy it somewhere else and either bring or ship it back to where you need it, then something's drastically wrong with Samsung's pricing in your home region for you to wish to go through that trouble.

""explanation for this whole debacle is that Samsung instituted the locks in an attempt to combat gray-market sales — a European buying a phone from Hong Kong over eBay to save money, for example."

I would argue that if enough users are doing that for Samsung to see it as a problem, perhaps they should revisit their pricing in those regions. If it's cheaper to buy it somewhere else and either bring or ship it back to where you need it, then something's drastically wrong with Samsung's pricing in your home region for you to wish to go through that trouble. "

Pricing can be influenced by many factors out of Samsung's control. Generally speaking, there are legitimate reasons why pricing is higher in on area and lower in another. Regardless of their particular situation, region-locking is not a good answer in my opinion.